Metropole und Verbrechen. Die Gerichtsreportage in Berlin, Paris und Chicago, 1919–1933. By Daniel Siemens. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. 2007. Pp. 444. Cloth €54.00. ISBN 978-3-515-09008-7.

摘要

Siemens’s prize-winning dissertation, like the newspapers on which it focuses,ntells many stories. It is, of course, much more selective than they were, focusingnas it does on a particular theme that reverberated in parts of the press rather thannon the history of journalism more generally—let alone on anything like the fullnrange of topics on which newspaper reporters wrote. Siemens depicts, however,na very wide array of events and developments. While concentrating on narra-ntions of and commentaries on criminal trials in nine newspapers in threen“world cities”—two in Europe and one in the United States—during thendecade and a half after World War I, he situates Gerichtsreportage with referencento the histories of crime, criminal justice, criminology, and criminal medicine.nBy far the best known of the trials with which Siemens deals occurred innChicago. It entailed the prosecution of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loebnfor the murder of Bobby Franks and the successful effort by their attorney, Clar-nence Darrow, to enable them to escape the death penalty. But Siemens’s booknconsiders many other trials as well, with proceedings that led or could havenled to capital punishments standing out. It thus offers the reader a multi-nfaceted delineation of ways in which (supposedly) criminal acts and institutionalnresponses to them permeated the consciousness of urban readers, resulting innwhat the author refers to as “interdiscourses” that transcended more limited dis-ncourses of either a professional or popular sort. The history of the media is thusnpursued here with a view to leaving us with a broad comprehension of legalnculture, the culture of crime, and the history of metropolitan mentalities, asnwell as of contested views about the relationships between the rights of individ-nuals and the need for protection from public “enemies.”